According to The Miami Herald, “Cuban police broke up a demonstration by about 30 dissidents in central Havana on International Human Rights Day, taking away some of them in cars.”
El Nuevo Herald meanwhile reported that “dozens of activists from various opposition groups, including the leader of the Ladies in White, Berta Soler, and her husband, activist Angel Moya, were arrested on Wednesday when they tried to commemorate Human Rights Day with peaceful protests in Cuba.”
“Soler and Moya were held from the morning until around 6:00 pm in the afternoon,” according to fellow activist Marta Beatriz Roque. At 10 am, Moya tweeted his last message of the day, reporting that they were preparing to leave home despite surveillance operations. “We will come out now, the house is not jail,” he wrote.
Also, the news agency AFP reported that “at least 32 dissidents were arrested, but the numbers are difficult to confirm,” according to Elizardo Sanchez, spokesman for the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation (CCDHRN), who referred to “dozens of arrests” yesterday, December 10th.
Meanwhile, Reuters reported a scene in which members of the Ladies in White and other activists chanted “Freedom!” And “Long live human rights!” while being detained by police and members of the Ministry of the Interior (MININT), who were dressed in civilian clothes outside the Coppelia ice cream parlor in downtown Havana.
The Ladies in White are a human rights group founded by female relatives of the 75 dissidents arrested in March of 2003, during Cuba’s “Black Spring”, in order to plead for their release. The group received the Sakharov Prize “For freedom of Thought” awarded annually by the European Parliament…
To read the full Miami Herald article, click here.
To read the full El Nuevo Herald article (Spanish), click here.